CHAPTER IV
WOMAN'S SPHERE
One of the most potent arguments used against the political enfranchisement of woman, and one which ought to be powerful if its premises be correct and its conclusion sound, is the old, old argument used against every extension of feminine freedom in time past; that it would affect disastrously the true sphere of woman. Nature, they say, has appointed to each sex its peculiar duties, and has formed it physically, and fitted it mentally for the performance of those duties; and anything which would tend to the derangement of Nature's plans and interfere with her designs would be neither profitable nor righteous.
The sphere of woman—it is scarcely necessary to state, so universally is the idea accepted and acted upon—is confined within the four walls of her home. Her sole function in life should be maternity and all that is involved in the performance of that duty, the care of the children and the home, and, by no means incidentally, the service of the children’s father.
Thousands of intelligent women are in revolt against this doctrine, and their numbers increase daily. Still, by far the greater part of the population, men and women alike, are in bondage to this ignoble conception of woman’s purpose in life, having advanced no farther in these Christian times than their heathen predecessors of Greece, one of whose teachers declared: “War, politics, and public speaking are the sphere of man; that of woman is to keep house, to stay at home, and to receive and tend her husband.”
The fact that so many women of the present still cling tenaciously to this old idea of their sex’s servitude is due in part to their belief in its Divine sanction, and partly to a condition of intellect and soul which is the most painful effect of ages of subjection. Ages of domination have produced a love of domination, a desire for servitude. Enslaved for so long in the flesh they have become also slavish in spirit, loving fondly the chains that bind them and grovelling at the feet of the being who destroys them.
Let it not be understood from the foregoing that the holy office of motherhood is despised, that a well-ordered home is not a desirable and necessary thing, and that the rearing and educating of the nation’s future citizens is not the noblest of all work. No true woman would deny the great importance of these duties; nor that she, by reason of centuries of training at least, if not by reason of her sex, is peculiarly fitted to undertake them. And, far from shirking, she would glory in their doing, if the conditions of her labour bore any relation to the importance and dignity of the work.
The revolt of woman to-day is not against the work which Nature, confessedly, intended her to do. It is against the arbitrary limitations put upon her activities by men in matters educational, professional, social, and political which in increasing numbers she protests; and she justifies her rebellion completely when she points out that the sphere which is supposed to be peculiarly the sphere of woman is barred to innumerable women through no fault of their own, and by reason of economic changes over which neither man nor woman has any control.
Plato, who was more advanced than many of his contemporaries, and whose ideal is still to be fully realised, spoke the thoughts of the modern woman when he taught: “None of the occupations which comprehend the ordering of a State belong to woman as woman, nor yet to man as man, but natural gifts are to be found here and there in both sexes alike; and so far as her nature is concerned, the woman is admissible to all pursuits as well as the man.”
It would make interesting and instructive reading to discover how, out of the time-long servitude of woman, arose the conception of the purely domestic animal. Since Eve furnished Adam with excuse for his cowardly whine the curse of man has been upon her descendants. And the civilised man has always been the worse offender; for, knowing well what he was doing, he has used not only custom and tradition, but culture and religion to enslave his mate, whilst the savage enslaved but knew no wrong.
Far back in those dim ages, before the dawn of civilisation, animal-man and animal-woman lived in savage happiness, roaming the woods for the fruits and nuts with which they nourished themselves, and slaying for food such animals as came their way with the rude weapons they possessed. No knowledge was there of the inferiority of the one sex or the superiority of the other. The man pursued, the woman was pursued, and thus they came together, under no other ordinance than the sexual emotion, and with no other sanction than their sexual needs, to lose one another in the bush when Nature’s demands had been satisfied.
The savage woman, knowing her condition, was compelled to make preparation. Out of the leaves and branches of trees and such things as she could lay hold of, she constructed a rude temporary shelter for herself during the time of her helplessness, and provided beforehand such food as she might require. Unless the child died, or until it could provide for itself, she preserved the shelter, and into her life crept something withheld from her promiscuous lover, the mother-love with its humanising power, denied to the terrible savage, slaying and gorging in the forests.
Time passed, and the benefits of the primitive domestic arrangements began to appeal to the man, who saw himself saved from danger and exposure if he stayed with the woman. She would build for him, work for him, give him food and shelter, heal him when he was sick, grow herbs and fruits for him on the little plot outside the dwelling, and bring forth sons for him, whom he might train to feats of daring, and to assist him in the chase and against his enemies. Then came a short period of woman’s superiority. She alone knew anything of the domestic arts which made for comfort and happiness. To her belonged the rude knowledge of medicine. For a time she received homage; then began her career of slavery.
As civilisation advanced and men began to form themselves into societies in which individuals bound themselves together by laws and customs evolved by themselves, the love of private property developed, increasing with each step in progress, until private property in women became the recognised rule of society. So valuable had they become, for domestic and sexual purposes, that wars were fought for them, and raids of tribe upon tribe were made for their capture; or they were bought and sold in the open market. The early Aryan tribes purchased their wives, over whom they held the power of life and death.
Nor were things discovered to be much better for women when these wild, warlike tribes of Northern Europe swooped down upon the effete civilisations of Greece and Rome.