Along
with these two main threads of development, however,
we may observe a third, less obvious but not less significant-a
decided spiritual awakening, a striving of the xxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxd conscience, not only in regard to social
conduct, but in respect to the more profound problems
of existence and well being.
If
there is indeed a "stream of tendency, not ourselves,
that makes for righteousness," a stream of soul-seeking
beyond self-seeking, without doubt that stream is making
itself unmistakably felt in our generation.
In
this vast struggle that out race seems to be making
toward a fuller and more symmetrical realization of
its ideal life, the part played by woman must be incalulable.
It is preeminently her concern. She has been from time
out of mind the treasurer of all the spiritual wealth
of the race, and now that this wealth is in demand,
it is to her we must come for our supply and for our
help in adjusting that supply to our needs. In capacity
as the greatest preserver and guardian of the mysterious
gift of life, she has gathered untold stores of spiritual
experience.
If
her life, until recently, has been restricted to the
cradle and the hearth, with little opportunity for cultivating
that detachment and impersonality of nature which has
led men to their victorious ventures in civilization,
she has thus been enabled, even forced, to brood upon
the secrets of her own heart and to discern the pressing
need of the day and hour.
So
it happens that woman's genius is not only deeper, more
mystical, more impassioned and religious than man's,
but it is at the same time more actual, more sentient,
and less irrelevant. She has learned to keep close to
the life of the senses and to the life of the soul,
while she was obliged to let the life of reason go by
unfulfilled. If she has little interest in abstract
problems and principles, if she acts from impulse and
judges from intuition, if she loves aspiration and ignores
logic, it is because the long and inexorable economy
of evolution has imposed these tendencies upon her being.
If her genius is comparatively sterile in the realm
of her thought and invention, in the realm of feeling,
sensibility, and adjustment it is usually fertile and
supreme.
Since
all these interests in the deeper life of humanity are
thus the particular care of women, and are only dimly
appreciated by men, and since it is certain that the
whole life of a man must remain unhappy and distraught
if these interests are overlooked, there can be nothing
of more vital importance in our advance toward racial
perfection than the liberation and perfection of woman
and woman's helpfulness; and nothing more natural.
Theology
of a certain extreme type used to regard woman as the
source, or at least the channel, of all evil. It would
have been less absurd and nearer the truth to regard
her as the source of all good. For, while she is seemingly
less scrupulous than man, she is apt to be more conscientious,
more persevering after the best, more intolerant of
fundamental wrong, more fully conscious of the life
and requirements of the soul, which really cares little
for achievement and only asks to be made happy. She
may frequently exhibit a startling disregard of codes
and apparent reasons and conventions, but against the
profounder laws of essential morality and goodness she
seldom rebels.
The
liberation of woman, therefore, would seem to be an
essential factor in the ultimate liberation of humanity
from the coil of evil and disaster that so terribly
environs life. Without her ideality, her knowledge of
immortal things, her instinct for the best, we should
be forever involved in the maze of our own dreams, disasters,
and reforms. Without her intense practicality and her
genius of adaptation, we should find our conquest of
the resources of nature of little avail, after all,
in perfecting our earthly paradise. Woman is not by
nature a rebel or reformer. She knows a better way.
She is born a pragmatist, and lives to make the profound
desires of the human heart come true.
While
the religious and intellectual liberty of woman has
long been assured, her social, political, and economic
independence is still in debate. In other words, her
spirit and mind are free, while in the circumstantial
sphere she is still not fully emancipated. Whatever
we may think on this subject, whether we hold the economic
and political restriction to be part of a wise racial
economy or only a survival of arbitrary oppression,
there is yet another direction in which the actual liberation
of women is gradually taking place, which can only be
beneficial, and to which there can be no opposition
save the inertia of custom. That is the physical and
personal freeing of women's bodies from the slavery
of hampering dress and restricted activity.
The
superstition of women's physical helplessness, growing
out of her actual incapacity in some respects and at
certain times, has been long enough cultivated by women
as a means of advantage and encouraged by men as an
evidence of superiority. Under this old régime, the
more impossible her prescribed dress made physical exertion,
the better. Her very dependence won favors, and her
idleness marked the wealth and magnanimity of her lord.
This
is only the unpleasant side of the question, which reformers
like to dwell upon, and we must not forget the great
spiritual good woman has been able to bestow on the
world even through her enforced exemption and leisure.
It is a point that she herself is apt to lose sight
of in her race for freedom. But the fact remains that
the fashions of women's clothing of the past few centuries
are unsuited to modern conditions, unworthy of modern
woman, and are being finely superseded.
Women
of culture and independence, who care for beauty and
efficiency rather than conformity to unquestioned usage,
are discarding the extremes of old-time restrictive
costume in favour of more rational, more humane, and
lovely fashions. Shoes, gowns, coats, and hats for women
were never more comfortable than they are or may be
now. The day of the small waist and the pinched foot
is passing.
The
women one sees everywhere are more free and graceful,
more natural and gracious, and therefore more magical
and enchanting than ever. Their walk and carriage are
mobile, more ideal, natural, and seraphic with the sorcery
of fine motion; their eyes are steadier, their voices
more happy and level, as they go about the world untortured
and undistraught
Women's
participation in outdoor life and in active recreations
and occupations tends in the same direction of personal
freedom and fulfilment. When once the pleasure and power
of free physical effort are experienced, and the supreme
beauty of free motion is realized, restrictions of clothing
become intolerable.
In
the wonderful art of life, whatever is merely arbitrary
and artificial must give place to what is more sane,
inspired, helpful and lovely. Corsets are for cripples,
and clogs for slaves; but emancipated men and women
must have the freedom of unspoiled nature in order fully
to evince and radiate the spirit and intelligence that
inhabit them; else are we nothing but puppets and mummies,
unfair, uncomfortable, and debased. For nothing is so
brutal as pain. Nothing-neither hardship, nor sorrow,
nor failure, nor ill fortune-can so quickly thwart and
deform the soul and poison the mind as bodily torture.
It
only remains for all women to demand and take this freedom,
as the wisest are doing. It is a fundamental and influential
liberty in which woman has everything to gain and nothing
to lose. She must assume her right to a free body in
order adequately to express her freedom of thought and
feeling. One often wonders that economic and political
equality should be so violently contended for by women
who would not abandon the fetters of unnatural dress
for a queen's sovereignty.
The
strangest thing about the impressive parades in the
agitation for equal suffrage is not the fact that so
many women should have the enthusiasm to walk in them,
but that so few of them should walk so convincingly.
The spectacle of ten thousand advanced women voluntarily
walking in the antiquated fetters of a by-gone age is
a strange argument for their readiness to serve the
cause of human freedom.
The
whole question of personal or physical emancipation
for women on equal terms with men would seem to be logically
prior to their social and political equality; and failure
to make use of the one would seem fundamentally to delay
the realization of the other. Certainly, so far as the
good of the race goes and the immediate happiness of
all concerned, freedom to move and breath and live a
normally comfortable, kindly, and beautiful bodily life
is of first vital importance.
