The Subjection of Women
whom it ostensibly belongs from really performing it; while the
person by whom it is performed, the responsible minister, does obtain
the post by a competition from which no full-grown citizen of the
male sex is legally excluded. The disabilities, therefore, to which
women are subject from the mere fact of their birth, are the solitary
examples of the kind in modern legislation. In no instance except
this, which comprehends half the human race, are the higher social
functions closed against any one by a fatality of birth which no
exertions, and no change of circumstances, can overcome; for even
religious disabilities (besides that in England and in Europe they
have practically almost ceased to exist) do not close any career to
the disqualified person in case of conversion.
The social subordination of women thus stands out an isolated fact in
modern social institutions; a solitary breach of what has become
their fundamental law; a single relic of an old world of thought and
practice exploded in everything else, but retained in the one thing
of most universal interest; as if a gigantic dolmen, or a vast temple
of Jupiter Olympius, occupied the site of St. Paul's and received
daily worship, while the surrounding Christian churches were only
resorted to on fasts and festivals. This entire discrepancy between
one social fact and all those which accompany it, and the radical
opposition between its nature and the progressive movement which is
the boast of the modern world, and which has successively swept away
everything else of an analogous character, surely affords, to a
conscientious observer of human tendencies, serious matter for
reflection. It raises a prima facie presumption on the unfavourable
side, far outweighing any which custom and usage could in such
circumstances create on the favourable; and should at least suffice
to make this, like the choice between republicanism and royalty, a
balanced question.
The least that can be demanded is, that the question should not be
considered as prejudged by existing fact and existing opinion, but
open to discussion on its merits, as a question of justice and
expediency: the decision on this, as on any of the other social
arrangements of mankind, depending on what an enlightened estimate of
tendencies and consequences may show to be most advantageous to
humanity in general, without distinction of sex. And the discussion
must be a real discussion, descending to foundations, and not resting
satisfied with vague and general assertions. It will not do, for
instance, to assert in general terms, that the experience of mankind
has pronounced in favour of the existing system. Experience cannot
possibly have decided between two courses, so long as there has only
been experience of one. If it be said that the doctrine of the
equality of the sexes rests only on theory, it must be remembered
that the contrary doctrine also has only theory to rest upon. All
that is proved in its favour by direct experience, is that mankind
have been able to exist under it, and to attain the degree of
improvement and prosperity which we now see; but whether that
prosperity has been attained sooner, or is now greater, than it would
have been under the other system, experience does not say. On the
other hand, experience does say, that every step in improvement has
been so invariably accompanied by a step made in raising the social
position of women, that historians and philosophers have been led to
adopt their elevation or debasement as on the whole the surest test
and most correct measure of the civilization of a people or an age.
Through all the progressive period of human history, the condition of
women has been approaching nearer to equality with men. This does not
of itself prove that the assimilation must go on to complete
equality; but it assuredly affords some presumption that such is the
case.
Neither does it avail anything to say that the _nature_ of the two
sexes adapts them to their present functions and position, and
renders these appropriate to them. Standing on the ground of common
sense and the constitution of the human mind, I deny that any one
knows, or can know, the nature of the two sexes, as long as they have
only been seen in their present relation to one another. If men had
ever been found in society without women, or women without men, or if
there had been a society of men and women in which the women were not
under the control of the men, something might have been positively
known about the mental and moral differences which may be inherent in
the nature of each. What is now called the nature of women is an
eminently artificial thing--the result of forced repression in some
directions, unnatural stimulation in others. It may be asserted
without scruple, that no other class of dependents have had their
character so entirely distorted from its natural proportions by their
relation with their masters; for, if conquered and slave races have
been, in some respects, more forcibly repressed, whatever in them has
not been crushed down by an iron heel has generally been let alone,
and if left with any liberty of development, it has developed itself
according to its own laws; but in the case of women, a hot-house and
stove cultivation has always been carried on of some of the
capabilities of their nature, for the benefit and pleasure of their
masters. Then, because certain products of the general vital force
sprout luxuriantly and reach a great development in this heated
atmosphere and under this active nurture and watering, while other
shoots from the same root, which are left outside in the wintry air,
with ice purposely heaped all round them, have a stunted growth, and
some are burnt off with fire and disappear; men, with that inability
to recognise their own work which distinguishes the unanalytic mind,
indolently believe that the tree grows of itself in the way they have
made it grow, and that it would die if one half of it were not kept
in a vapour bath and the other half in the snow.
Of all difficulties which impede the progress of thought, and the
formation of well-grounded opinions on life and social arrangements,
the greatest is now the unspeakable ignorance and inattention of
mankind in respect to the influences which form human character.
Whatever any portion of the human species now are, or seem to be,
such, it is supposed, they have a natural tendency to be: even when
the most elementary knowledge of the circumstances in which they have
been placed, clearly points out the causes that made them what they
are. Because a cottier deeply in arrears to his landlord is not
industrious, there are people who think that the Irish are naturally
idle. Because constitutions can be overthrown when the authorities
appointed to execute them turn their arms against them, there are
people who think the French incapable of free government. Because the
Greeks cheated the Turks, and the Turks only plundered the Greeks,
there are persons who think that the Turks are naturally more
sincere: and because women, as is often said, care nothing about
politics except their personalities, it is supposed that the general
good is naturally less interesting to women than to men. History,
which is now so much better understood than formerly, teaches another
lesson: if only by showing the extraordinary susceptibility of human
nature to external influences, and the extreme variableness of those
of its manifestations which are supposed to be most universal and
uniform. But in history, as in travelling, men usually see only what
they already had in their own minds; and few learn much from history,
who do not bring much with them to its study.
Hence, in regard to that most difficult question, what are the
natural differences between the two sexes--a subject on which it is
impossible in the present state of society to obtain complete and
correct knowledge--while almost everybody dogmatizes upon it, almost
all neglect and make light of the only means by which any partial
insight can be obtained into it. This is, an analytic study of the
most important department of psychology, the laws of the influence of
circumstances on character. For, however great and apparently
ineradicable the moral and intellectual differences between men and
women might be, the evidence of their being natural differences could
only be negative. Those only could be inferred to be natural which
could not possibly be artificial--the residuum, after deducting every
characteristic of either sex which can admit of being explained from
education or external circumstances. The profoundest knowledge of the
laws of the formation of character is indispensable to entitle any
one to affirm even that there is any difference, much more what the
difference is, between the two sexes considered as moral and rational
beings; and since no one, as yet, has that knowledge, (for there is
hardly any subject which, in proportion to its importance, has been
so little studied), no one is thus far entitled to any positive
opinion on the subject. Conjectures are all that can at present be
made; conjectures more or less probable, according as more or less
authorized by such knowledge as we yet have of the laws of
psychology, as applied to the formation of character.
Even the preliminary knowledge, what the differences between the
sexes now are, apart from all question as to how they are made what
they are, is still in the crudest and most incomplete state. Medical
practitioners and physiologists have ascertained, to some extent, the
differences in bodily constitution; and this is an important element
to the psychologist: but hardly any medical practitioner is a
psychologist. Respecting the mental characteristics of women; their
observations are of no more worth than those of common men. It is a
subject on which nothing final can be known, so long as those who
alone can really know it, women themselves, have given but little
testimony, and that little, mostly suborned. It is easy to know
stupid women. Stupidity is much the same all the world over. A stupid
person's notions and feelings may confidently be inferred from those
which prevail in the circle by which the person is surrounded. Not so
with those whose opinions and feelings are an emanation from their
own nature and faculties. It is only a man here and there who has any
tolerable knowledge of the character even of the women of his own
family. I do not mean, of their capabilities; these nobody knows, not
even themselves, because most of them have never been called out. I
mean their actually existing thoughts and feelings. Many a man thinks
he perfectly understands women, because he has had amatory relations
with several, perhaps with many of them. If he is a good observer,
and his experience extends to quality as well as quantity, he may
have learnt something of one narrow department of their nature--an
important department, no doubt. But of all the rest of it, few
persons are generally more ignorant, because there are few from whom
it is so carefully hidden. The most favourable case which a man can
generally have for studying the character of a woman, is that of his
own wife: for the opportunities are greater, and the cases of
complete sympathy not so unspeakably rare. And in fact, this is the
source from which any knowledge worth having on the subject has, I
believe, generally come. But most men have not had the opportunity of
studying in this way more than a single case: accordingly one can, to
an almost laughable degree, infer what a man's wife is like, from his
opinions about women in general. To make even this one case yield any
result, the woman must be worth knowing, and the man not only a
competent judge, but of a character so sympathetic in itself, and so