The Subjection of Women
should find in their protectors. Courage, and the military virtues
generally, have at all times been greatly indebted to the desire
which men felt of being admired by women: and the stimulus reaches
far beyond this one class of eminent qualities, since, by a very
natural effect of their position, the best passport to the admiration
and favour of women has always been to be thought highly of by men.
From the combination of the two kinds of moral influence thus
exercised by women, arose the spirit of chivalry: the peculiarity of
which is, to aim at combining the highest standard of the warlike
qualities with the cultivation of a totally different class of
virtues--those of gentleness, generosity, and self-abnegation,
towards the non-military and defenceless classes generally, and a
special submission and worship directed towards women; who were
distinguished from the other defenceless classes by the high rewards
which they had it in their power voluntarily to bestow on those who
endeavoured to earn their favour, instead of extorting their
subjection. Though the practice of chivalry fell even more sadly
short of its theoretic standard than practice generally falls below
theory, it remains one of the most precious monuments of the moral
history of our race; as a remarkable instance of a concerted and
organized attempt by a most disorganized and distracted society, to
raise up and carry into practice a moral ideal greatly in advance of
its social condition and institutions; so much so as to have been
completely frustrated in the main object, yet never entirely
inefficacious, and which has left a most sensible, and for the most
part a highly valuable impress on the ideas and feelings of all
subsequent times.
The chivalrous ideal is the acme of the influence of women's
sentiments on the moral cultivation of mankind: and if women are to
remain in their subordinate situation, it were greatly to be lamented
that the chivalrous standard should have passed away, for it is the
only one at all capable of mitigating the demoralizing influences of
that position. But the changes in the general state of the species
rendered inevitable the substitution of a totally different ideal of
morality for the chivalrous one. Chivalry was the attempt to infuse
moral elements into a state of society in which everything depended
for good or evil on individual prowess, under the softening
influences of individual delicacy and generosity. In modern
societies, all things, even in the military department of affairs,
are decided, not by individual effort, but by the combined operations
of numbers; while the main occupation of society has changed from
fighting to business, from military to industrial life. The
exigencies of the new life are no more exclusive of the virtues of
generosity than those of the old, but it no longer entirely depends
on them. The main foundations of the moral life of modern times must
be justice and prudence; the respect of each for the rights of every
other, and the ability of each to take care of himself. Chivalry left
without legal check all forms of wrong which reigned unpunished
throughout society; it only encouraged a few to do right in
preference to wrong, by the direction it gave to the instruments of
praise and admiration. But the real dependence of morality must
always be upon its penal sanctions--its power to deter from evil. The
security of society cannot rest on merely rendering honour to right,
a motive so comparatively weak in all but a few, and which on very
many does not operate at all. Modern society is able to repress wrong
through all departments of life, by a fit exertion of the superior
strength which civilization has given it, and thus to render the
existence of the weaker members of society (no longer defenceless but
protected by law) tolerable to them, without reliance on the
chivalrous feelings of those who are in a position to tyrannize. The
beauties and graces of the chivalrous character are still what they
were, but the rights of the weak, and the general comfort of human
life, now rest on a far surer and steadier support; or rather, they
do so in every relation of life except the conjugal.
At present the moral influence of women is no less real, but it is no
longer of so marked and definite a character: it has more nearly
merged in the general influence of public opinion. Both through the
contagion of sympathy, and through the desire of men to shine in the
eyes of women, their feelings have great effect in keeping alive what
remains of the chivalrous ideal--in fostering the sentiments and
continuing the traditions of spirit and generosity. In these points
of character, their standard is higher than that of men; in the
quality of justice, somewhat lower. As regards the relations of
private life it may be said generally, that their influence is, on
the whole, encouraging to the softer virtues, discouraging to the
sterner: though the statement must be taken with all the
modifications dependent on individual character. In the chief of the
greater trials to which virtue is subject in the concerns of
life--the conflict between interest and principle--the tendency of
women's influence is of a very mixed character. When the principle
involved happens to be one of the very few which the course of their
religious or moral education has strongly impressed upon themselves,
they are potent auxiliaries to virtue: and their husbands and sons
are often prompted by them to acts of abnegation which they never
would have been capable of without that stimulus. But, with the
present education and position of women, the moral principles which
have been impressed on them cover but a comparatively small part of
the field of virtue, and are, moreover, principally negative;
forbidding particular acts, but having little to do with the general
direction of the thoughts and purposes. I am afraid it must be said,
that disinterestedness in the general conduct of life--the devotion
of the energies to purposes which hold out no promise of private
advantages to the family--is very seldom encouraged or supported by
women's influence. It is small blame to them that they discourage
objects of which they have not learnt to see the advantage, and which
withdraw their men from them, and from the interests of the family.
But the consequence is that women's influence is often anything but
favourable to public virtue.
Women have, however, some share of influence in giving the tone to
public moralities since their sphere of action has been a little
widened, and since a considerable number of them have occupied
themselves practically in the promotion of objects reaching beyond
their own family and household. The influence of women counts for a
great deal in two of the most marked features of modern European
life--its aversion to war, and its addiction to philanthropy.
Excellent characteristics both; but unhappily, if the influence of
women is valuable in the encouragement it gives to these feelings in
general, in the particular applications the direction it gives to
them is at least as often mischievous as useful. In the philanthropic
department more particularly, the two provinces chiefly cultivated by
women are religious proselytism and charity. Religious proselytism at
home, is but another word for embittering of religious animosities:
abroad, it is usually a blind running at an object, without either
knowing or heeding the fatal mischiefs--fatal to the religious object
itself as well as to all other desirable objects--which may be
produced by the means employed. As for charity, it is a matter in
which the immediate effect on the persons directly concerned, and the
ultimate consequence to the general good, are apt to be at complete
war with one another: while the education given to women--an
education of the sentiments rather than of the understanding--and the
habit inculcated by their whole life, of looking to immediate effects
on persons, and not to remote effects on classes of persons--make
them both unable to see, and unwilling to admit, the ultimate evil
tendency of any form of charity or philanthropy which commends itself
to their sympathetic feelings. The great and continually increasing
mass of unenlightened and shortsighted benevolence, which, taking the
care of people's lives out of their own hands, and relieving them
from the disagreeable consequences of their own acts, saps the very
foundations of the self-respect, self-help, and self-control which
are the essential conditions both of individual prosperity and of
social virtue--this waste of resources and of benevolent feelings in
doing harm instead of good, is immensely swelled by women's
contributions, and stimulated by their influence. Not that this is a
mistake likely to be made by women, where they have actually the
practical management of schemes of beneficence. It sometimes happens
that women who administer public charities--with that insight into
present fact, and especially into the minds and feelings of those
with whom they are in immediate contact, in which women generally
excel men--recognise in the clearest manner the demoralizing
influence of the alms given or the help afforded, and could give
lessons on the subject to many a male political economist. But women
who only give their money, and are not brought face to face with the
effects it produces, how can they be expected to foresee them? A
woman born to the present lot of women, and content with it, how
should she appreciate the value of self-dependence? She is not
self-dependent; she is not taught self-dependence; her destiny is to
receive everything from others, and why should what is good enough
for her be bad for the poor? Her familiar notions of good are of
blessings descending from a superior. She forgets that she is not
free, and that the poor are; that if what they need is given to them
unearned, they cannot be compelled to earn it: that everybody cannot
be taken care of by everybody, but there must be some motive to
induce people to take care of themselves; and that to be helped to
help themselves, if they are physically capable of it, is the only
charity which proves to be charity in the end.
These considerations show how usefully the part which women take in
the formation of general opinion, would be modified for the better by
that more enlarged instruction, and practical conversancy with the
things which their opinions influence, that would necessarily arise
from their social and political emancipation. But the improvement it
would work through the influence they exercise, each in her own
family, would be still more remarkable.
It is often said that in the classes most exposed to temptation, a
man's wife and children tend to keep him honest and respectable, both
by the wife's direct influence, and by the concern he feels for their
future welfare. This may be so, and no doubt often is so, with those
who are more weak than wicked; and this beneficial influence would be
preserved and strengthened under equal laws; it does not depend on
the woman's servitude, but is, on the contrary, diminished by the
disrespect which the inferior class of men always at heart feel
towards those who are subject to their power. But when we ascend
higher in the scale, we come among a totally different set of moving
forces. The wife's influence tends, as far as it goes, to prevent the
husband from falling below the common standard of approbation of the
country. It tends quite as strongly to hinder him from rising above
it. The wife is the auxiliary of the common public opinion. A man who
is married to a woman his inferior in intelligence, finds her a
perpetual dead weight, or, worse than a dead weight, a drag, upon
every aspiration of his to be better than public opinion requires him