The Subjection of Women
influencing, and very probably perverting, his conduct, in those of
his external relations which she has never qualified herself to judge
of, or in which she is herself wholly influenced by some personal or
other partiality or prejudice. Accordingly, as things now are, those
who act most kindly to their wives, are quite as often made worse, as
better, by the wife's influence, in respect to all interests
extending beyond the family. She is taught that she has no business
with things out of that sphere; and accordingly she seldom has any
honest and conscientious opinion on them; and therefore hardly ever
meddles with them for any legitimate purpose, but generally for an
interested one. She neither knows nor cares which is the right side
in politics, but she knows what will bring in money or invitations,
give her husband a title, her son a place, or her daughter a good
marriage.
But how, it will be asked, can any society exist without government?
In a family, as in a state, some one person must be the ultimate
ruler. Who shall decide when married people differ in opinion? Both
cannot have their way, yet a decision one way or the other must be
come to.
It is not true that in all voluntary association between two people,
one of them must be absolute master: still less that the law must
determine which of them it shall be. The most frequent case of
voluntary association, next to marriage, is partnership in business:
and it is not found or thought necessary to enact that in every
partnership, one partner shall have entire control over the concern,
and the others shall be bound to obey his orders. No one would enter
into partnership on terms which would subject him to the
responsibilities of a principal, with only the powers and privileges
of a clerk or agent. If the law dealt with other contracts as it does
with marriage, it would ordain that one partner should administer the
common business as if it was his private concern; that the others
should have only delegated powers; and that this one should be
designated by some general presumption of law, for example as being
the eldest. The law never does this: nor does experience show it to
be necessary that any theoretical inequality of power should exist
between the partners, or that the partnership should have any other
conditions than what they may themselves appoint by their articles of
agreement. Yet it might seem that the exclusive power might be
conceded with less danger to the rights and interests of the
inferior, in the case of partnership than in that of marriage, since
he is free to cancel the power by withdrawing from the connexion. The
wife has no such power, and even if she had, it is almost always
desirable that she should try all measures before resorting to it.
It is quite true that things which have to be decided every day, and
cannot adjust themselves gradually, or wait for a compromise, ought
to depend on one will: one person must have their sole control. But
it does not follow that this should always be the same person. The
natural arrangement is a division of powers between the two; each
being absolute in the executive branch of their own department, and
any change of system and principle requiring the consent of both. The
division neither can nor should be pre-established by the law, since
it must depend on individual capacities and suitabilities. If the two
persons chose, they might pre-appoint it by the marriage contract, as
pecuniary arrangements are now often pre-appointed. There would
seldom be any difficulty in deciding such things by mutual consent,
unless the marriage was one of those unhappy ones in which all other
things, as well as this, become subjects of bickering and dispute.
The division of rights would naturally follow the division of duties
and functions; and that is already made by consent, or at all events
not by law, but by general custom, modified and modifiable at the
pleasure of the persons concerned.
The real practical decision of affairs, to whichever may be given the
legal authority, will greatly depend, as it even now does, upon
comparative qualifications. The mere fact that he is usually the
eldest, will in most cases give the preponderance to the man; at
least until they both attain a time of life at which the difference
in their years is of no importance. There will naturally also be a
more potential voice on the side, whichever it is, that brings the
means of support. Inequality from this source does not depend on the
law of marriage, but on the general conditions of human society, as
now constituted. The influence of mental superiority, either general
or special, and of superior decision of character, will necessarily
tell for much. It always does so at present. And this fact shows how
little foundation there is for the apprehension that the powers and
responsibilities of partners in life (as of partners in business),
cannot be satisfactorily apportioned by agreement between themselves.
They always are so apportioned, except in cases in which the marriage
institution is a failure. Things never come to an issue of downright
power on one side, and obedience on the other, except where the
connexion altogether has been a mistake, and it would be a blessing
to both parties to be relieved from it. Some may say that the very
thing by which an amicable settlement of differences becomes
possible, is the power of legal compulsion known to be in reserve; as
people submit to an arbitration because there is a court of law in
the background, which they know that they can be forced to obey. But
to make the cases parallel, we must suppose that the rule of the
court of law was, not to try the cause, but to give judgment always
for the same side, suppose the defendant. If so, the amenability to
it would be a motive with the plaintiff to agree to almost any
arbitration, but it would be just the reverse with the defendant. The
despotic power which the law gives to the husband may be a reason to
make the wife assent to any compromise by which power is practically
shared between the two, but it cannot be the reason why the husband
does. That there is always among decently conducted people a
practical compromise, though one of them at least is under no
physical or moral necessity of making it, shows that the natural
motives which lead to a voluntary adjustment of the united life of
two persons in a manner acceptable to both, do on the whole, except
in unfavourable cases, prevail. The matter is certainly not improved
by laying down as an ordinance of law, that the superstructure of
free government shall be raised upon a legal basis of despotism on
one side and subjection on the other, and that every concession which
the despot makes may, at his mere pleasure, and without any warning,
be recalled. Besides that no freedom is worth much when held on so
precarious a tenure, its conditions are not likely to be the most
equitable when the law throws so prodigious a weight into one scale;
when the adjustment rests between two persons one of whom is declared
to be entitled to everything, the other not only entitled to nothing
except during the good pleasure of the first, but under the strongest
moral and religious obligation not to rebel under any excess of
oppression.
A pertinacious adversary, pushed to extremities, may say, that
husbands indeed are willing to be reasonable, and to make fair
concessions to their partners without being compelled to it, but that
wives are not: that if allowed any rights of their own, they will
acknowledge no rights at all in any one else, and never will yield in
anything, unless they can be compelled, by the man's mere authority,
to yield in everything. This would have been said by many persons
some generations ago, when satires on women were in vogue, and men
thought it a clever thing to insult women for being what men made
them. But it will be said by no one now who is worth replying to. It
is not the doctrine of the present day that women are less
susceptible of good feeling, and consideration for those with whom
they are united by the strongest ties, than men are. On the contrary,
we are perpetually told that women are better than men, by those who
are totally opposed to treating them as if they were as good; so that
the saying has passed into a piece of tiresome cant, intended to put
a complimentary face upon an injury, and resembling those
celebrations of royal clemency which, according to Gulliver, the king
of Lilliput always prefixed to his most sanguinary decrees. If women
are better than men in anything, it surely is in individual
self-sacrifice for those of their own family. But I lay little stress
on this, so long as they are universally taught that they are born
and created for self-sacrifice. I believe that equality of rights
would abate the exaggerated self-abnegation which is the present
artificial ideal of feminine character, and that a good woman would
not be more self-sacrificing than the best man: but on the other
hand, men would be much more unselfish and self-sacrificing than at
present, because they would no longer be taught to worship their own
will as such a grand thing that it is actually the law for another
rational being. There is nothing which men so easily learn as this
self-worship: all privileged persons, and all privileged classes,
have had it. The more we descend in the scale of humanity, the
intenser it is; and most of all in those who are not, and can never
expect to be, raised above any one except an unfortunate wife and
children. The honourable exceptions are proportionally fewer than in
the case of almost any other human infirmity. Philosophy and
religion, instead of keeping it in check, are generally suborned to
defend it; and nothing controls it but that practical feeling of the
equality of human beings, which is the theory of Christianity, but
which Christianity will never practically teach, while it sanctions
institutions grounded on an arbitrary preference of one human being
over another.
There are, no doubt, women, as there are men, whom equality of
consideration will not satisfy; with whom there is no peace while any
will or wish is regarded but their own. Such persons are a proper
subject for the law of divorce. They are only fit to live alone, and
no human beings ought to be compelled to associate their lives with
them. But the legal subordination tends to make such characters among
women more, rather than less, frequent. If the man exerts his whole
power, the woman is of course crushed: but if she is treated with
indulgence, and permitted to assume power, there is no rule to set
limits to her encroachments. The law, not determining her rights, but
theoretically allowing her none at all, practically declares that the
measure of what she has a right to, is what she can contrive to get.
The equality of married persons before the law, is not only the sole
mode in which that particular relation can be made consistent with
justice to both sides, and conducive to the happiness of both, but it
is the only means of rendering the daily life of mankind, in any high
sense, a school of moral cultivation. Though the truth may not be
felt or generally acknowledged for generations to come, the only
school of genuine moral sentiment is society between equals. The
moral education of mankind has hitherto emanated chiefly from the law
of force, and is adapted almost solely to the relations which force
creates. In the less advanced states of society, people hardly
recognise any relation with their equals. To be an equal is to be an
enemy. Society, from its highest place to its lowest, is one long
chain, or rather ladder, where every individual is either above or
below his nearest neighbour, and wherever he does not command he must