The Subjection of Women
well adapted to hers, that he can either read her mind by sympathetic
intuition, or has nothing in himself which makes her shy of
disclosing it. Hardly anything, I believe, can be more rare than this
conjunction. It often happens that there is the most complete unity
of feeling and community of interests as to all external things, yet
the one has as little admission into the internal life of the other
as if they were common acquaintance. Even with true affection,
authority on the one side and subordination on the other prevent
perfect confidence. Though nothing may be intentionally withheld,
much is not shown. In the analogous relation of parent and child, the
corresponding phenomenon must have been in the observation of every
one. As between father and son, how many are the cases in which the
father, in spite of real affection on both sides, obviously to all
the world does not know, nor suspect, parts of the son's character
familiar to his companions and equals. The truth is, that the
position of looking up to another is extremely unpropitious to
complete sincerity and openness with him. The fear of losing ground
in his opinion or in his feelings is so strong, that even in an
upright character, there is an unconscious tendency to show only the
best side, or the side which, though not the best, is that which he
most likes to see: and it may be confidently said that thorough
knowledge of one another hardly ever exists, but between persons who,
besides being intimates, are equals. How much more true, then, must
all this be, when the one is not only under the authority of the
other, but has it inculcated on her as a duty to reckon everything
else subordinate to his comfort and pleasure, and to let him neither
see nor feel anything coming from her, except what is agreeable to
him. All these difficulties stand in the way of a man's obtaining any
thorough knowledge even of the one woman whom alone, in general, he
has sufficient opportunity of studying. When we further consider that
to understand one woman is not necessarily to understand any other
woman; that even if he could study many women of one rank, or of one
country, he would not thereby understand women of other ranks or
countries; and even if he did, they are still only the women of a
single period of history; we may safely assert that the knowledge
which men can acquire of women, even as they have been and are,
without reference to what they might be, is wretchedly imperfect and
superficial, and always will be so, until women themselves have told
all that they have to tell.
And this time has not come; nor will it come otherwise than
gradually. It is but of yesterday that women have either been
qualified by literary accomplishments, or permitted by society, to
tell anything to the general public. As yet very few of them dare
tell anything, which men, on whom their literary success depends, are
unwilling to hear. Let us remember in what manner, up to a very
recent time, the expression, even by a male author, of uncustomary
opinions, or what are deemed eccentric feelings, usually was, and in
some degree still is, received; and we may form some faint conception
under what impediments a woman, who is brought up to think custom and
opinion her sovereign rule, attempts to express in books anything
drawn from the depths of her own nature. The greatest woman who has
left writings behind her sufficient to give her an eminent rank in
the literature of her country, thought it necessary to prefix as a
motto to her boldest work, "Un homme peut braver l'opinion; une femme
doit s'y soumettre."[1] The greater part of what women write about
women is mere sycophancy to men. In the case of unmarried women, much
of it seems only intended to increase their chance of a husband.
Many, both married and unmarried, overstep the mark, and inculcate a
servility beyond what is desired or relished by any man, except the
very vulgarest. But this is not so often the case as, even at a quite
late period, it still was. Literary women are becoming more
freespoken, and more willing to express their real sentiments.
Unfortunately, in this country especially, they are themselves such
artificial products, that their sentiments are compounded of a small
element of individual observation and consciousness, and a very large
one of acquired associations. This will be less and less the case,
but it will remain true to a great extent, as long as social
institutions do not admit the same free development of originality in
women which is possible to men. When that time comes, and not before,
we shall see, and not merely hear, as much as it is necessary to know
of the nature of women, and the adaptation of other things to it.
I have dwelt so much on the difficulties which at present obstruct
any real knowledge by men of the true nature of women, because in
this as in so many other things "opinio copiae inter maximas causas
inopiae est;" and there is little chance of reasonable thinking on the
matter, while people flatter themselves that they perfectly
understand a subject of which most men know absolutely nothing, and
of which it is at present impossible that any man, or all men taken
together, should have knowledge which can qualify them to lay down
the law to women as to what is, or is not, their vocation. Happily,
no such knowledge is necessary for any practical purpose connected
with the position of women in relation to society and life. For,
according to all the principles involved in modern society, the
question rests with women themselves--to be decided by their own
experience, and by the use of their own faculties. There are no means
of finding what either one person or many can do, but by trying--and
no means by which any one else can discover for them what it is for
their happiness to do or leave undone.
One thing we may be certain of--that what is contrary to women's
nature to do, they never will be made to do by simply giving their
nature free play. The anxiety of mankind to interfere in behalf of
nature, for fear lest nature should not succeed in effecting its
purpose, is an altogether unnecessary solicitude. What women by
nature cannot do, it is quite superfluous to forbid them from doing.
What they can do, but not so well as the men who are their
competitors, competition suffices to exclude them from; since nobody
asks for protective duties and bounties in favour of women; it is
only asked that the present bounties and protective duties in favour
of men should be recalled. If women have a greater natural
inclination for some things than for others, there is no need of laws
or social inculcation to make the majority of them do the former in
preference to the latter. Whatever women's services are most wanted
for, the free play of competition will hold out the strongest
inducements to them to undertake. And, as the words imply, they are
most wanted for the things for which they are most fit; by the
apportionment of which to them, the collective faculties of the two
sexes can be applied on the whole with the greatest sum of valuable
result.
The general opinion of men is supposed to be, that the natural
vocation of a woman is that of a wife and mother. I say, is supposed
to be, because, judging from acts--from the whole of the present
constitution of society--one might infer that their opinion was the
direct contrary. They might be supposed to think that the alleged
natural vocation of women was of all things the most repugnant to
their nature; insomuch that if they are free to do anything else--if
any other means of living, or occupation of their time and faculties,
is open, which has any chance of appearing desirable to them--there
will not be enough of them who will be willing to accept the
condition said to be natural to them. If this is the real opinion of
men in general, it would be well that it should be spoken out. I
should like to hear somebody openly enunciating the doctrine (it is
already implied in much that is written on the subject)--"It is
necessary to society that women should marry and produce children.
They will not do so unless they are compelled. Therefore it is
necessary to compel them." The merits of the case would then be
clearly defined. It would be exactly that of the slaveholders of
South Carolina and Louisiana. "It is necessary that cotton and sugar
should be grown. White men cannot produce them. Negroes will not, for
any wages which we choose to give. _Ergo_ they must be compelled." An
illustration still closer to the point is that of impressment.
Sailors must absolutely be had to defend the country. It often
happens that they will not voluntarily enlist. Therefore there must
be the power of forcing them. How often has this logic been used!
and, but for one flaw in it, without doubt it would have been
successful up to this day. But it is open to the retort--First pay
the sailors the honest value of their labour. When you have made it
as well worth their while to serve you, as to work for other
employers, you will have no more difficulty than others have in
obtaining their services. To this there is no logical answer except
"I will not:" and as people are now not only ashamed, but are not
desirous, to rob the labourer of his hire, impressment is no longer
advocated. Those who attempt to force women into marriage by closing
all other doors against them, lay themselves open to a similar
retort. If they mean what they say, their opinion must evidently be,
that men do not render the married condition so desirable to women,
as to induce them to accept it for its own recommendations. It is not
a sign of one's thinking the boon one offers very attractive, when
one allows only Hobson's choice, "that or none." And here, I believe,
is the clue to the feelings of those men, who have a real antipathy
to the equal freedom of women. I believe they are afraid, not lest
women should be unwilling to marry, for I do not think that any one
in reality has that apprehension; but lest they should insist that
marriage should be on equal conditions; lest all women of spirit and
capacity should prefer doing almost anything else, not in their own
eyes degrading, rather than marry, when marrying is giving themselves
a master, and a master too of all their earthly possessions. And
truly, if this consequence were necessarily incident to marriage, I
think that the apprehension would be very well founded. I agree in
thinking it probable that few women, capable of anything else, would,
unless under an irresistible _entrainement_, rendering them for the
time insensible to anything but itself, choose such a lot, when any
other means were open to them of filling a conventionally honourable
place in life: and if men are determined that the law of marriage
shall be a law of despotism, they are quite right, in point of mere
policy, in leaving to women only Hobson's choice. But, in that case,
all that has been done in the modern world to relax the chain on the
minds of women, has been a mistake. They never should have been
allowed to receive a literary education. Women who read, much more
women who write, are, in the existing constitution of things, a
contradiction and a disturbing element: and it was wrong to bring
women up with any acquirements but those of an odalisque, or of a
domestic servant.
[Footnote 1: Title-page of Mme. de Stael's "Delphine."]
CHAPTER II.
It will be well to commence the detailed discussion of the subject by
the particular branch of it to which the course of our observations
has led us: the conditions which the laws of this and all other
countries annex to the marriage contract. Marriage being the
destination appointed by society for women, the prospect they are
brought up to, and the object which it is intended should be sought