XIII. WOMEN OF THE WORLD.

Don’t you occasionally meet some good, honest, stupid man—sometimes, but not often, a woman instead of a man—who really cannot take in a new idea? You propound it to him, and he laughs in a good-natured, indulgent sort of way and shakes his head, which, by the way, is generally a fat and red-skinned head, a little bald on top, and says:

“Yes, yes, that’s your fancy, but there’s nothing in it, you know. It’s all been settled long ago, and pretty well settled, too—pretty well settled, too.”

Now, did it ever occur to you that such a man is a very fair type of the world at large? Of course the exterior varies. In Italy, Spain, France and other Latin countries the speaker is lean and dark and melancholy instead of jolly. He shrugs his shoulders, and raises his eye-brows, and throws out his hand, with the fingers spreading like the sticks of a fan, and in his own musical tongue enunciates the very same idea with the Anglo Saxon:

“It is all settled long ago. What has been will be. There is no room or need for change. Patienza!”

When a Latin says patienza it means that he absolutely won’t even think about doing what you wish to have him do, or even try to listen to your arguments in favor of the new course. It is very exasperating, but not quite so much so as the good-natured chuckle, often accompanied with the rattle of small currency in the trousers pockets, of the middle-aged Anglo-Saxon.

Both the one and the other are simply voicing the prevailing sentiment of their species about many matters, and chief of them just now about the proper place of women in the world.

Long ago, so says our friend, especially the middle-aged Anglo-Saxon, this was all settled.

Woman, lovely creature, was designed like the daisies to modestly ornament and embellish the path of man. She was to love, honor and obey, if she was permitted to marry him, and she was to serve and obey him under all circumstances and in every relationship. While she was young and pretty, man would admire and flatter her, even going to great lengths of folly in proving to her how much he loved her so long as she remained out of reach. But once she yielded to his frantic solicitations and became “the crown of his existence,” the programme changed entirely. If a crown of existence, after a few years it was in the fashion of an old hat—soft and pliable, easy to wear around home, but none too good to be tossed into a corner or “hung up” indefinitely when its wearer chose to go out into the world.

But the world turns over every day, and in spite of gravitation and cohesion and various other laws of nature, things do get occasionally turned upside down and “a little mixed.” Certainly it is a pity—that is, from the masculine point of view—that Galileo ever arose to interfere with the good old order of things when the solid plane of earth stood still and a man might know what to expect. But so it is. There is always some troublesome creature ready to suggest things are not what they seem nor what it has always been convenient to believe they were.

“It does move, nevertheless,” remarked Galileo, as he signed his recantation of just this heretical error, and woman—nay, let us give her the biggest capital in the composing box, and say Woman—is just the same sort of revolutionist as was Galileo. Very calm and gentle and rather timid, so that she may even be coaxed or bullied into signing a recantation of her firmest convictions, but always sweetly murmuring as she does so: “Nevertheless it does move.”

So, having acquired some new ideas in the course of this Galileoistic revolution and rebellion, lovely woman began to wonder why her sphere was necessarily a very small and monotonous circle, too much resembling the sphere of a horse in a cider mill, and why it should not be an ellipse, a rhomboid, a parabola, and anything in or outside of geometry, so long as it was something big and free and universal. Woman’s sphere! Why not talk of man’s sphere, and be always worrying around and fussing and fretting to see that he does not get out of it? Man’s sphere is the sphere of the world—nay, of the universe—so far as he has ability to grasp it. Then why isn’t woman’s sphere just the same? Her character and capacities are very much like those of man, although, like him, she as a sex ranges through many grades of capacity and intelligence. Some women are childish and silly. Some men are fools. Some women are governed by feeling and by personal prejudice; but surely more men are governed by prejudice, with not even the excuse of personal grounds, but merely blind and unreasoning. As for feeling, I will acknowledge that few men are governed by their hearts in worldly matters, but most of them are ruled by their pockets, and perhaps that tribunal is neither nobler nor safer than the woman’s feelings. Whatever the right or wrong of the matter, however, the fact remains that woman has rather abruptly but very decidedly enlarged and readjusted her sphere until it has become, like that of man, practically unlimited except by individual capacity.

This position being granted—and I will say, in all courtesy, whether it is granted or not—it becomes essential to also readjust some other things before one can with no faltering voice define woman’s future position in the world.

Man’s estimate of woman is one of the things needing readjustment. I have clearly set forth his long established, hereditary convictions, or rather prejudices, in the matter—those dear old prejudices to which he clings as did the deacon to his “one hoss shay,” until some fine day when all at once they crumble into dust beneath him, and he remains seated among the ruin in an attitude at once mournful and ridiculous.

Would it not be better, dear sir, before that day comes, to provide a new and modern vehicle and respectfully put the old “shay” into a museum or lumber room? Only don’t let your new “kirredge” be a sulky, I beg of you!

But descending—or ascending—from metaphor to plain statement and prognostication, it has become essential to the prosperity of the world in the immediate future that men as a sex should radically change their point of view with regard to this question. Women can no longer be set aside with a caress or pushed aside with a scowl or walked over as if unseen and unknown outside of their old treadmill. They have developed during the last score of years into a new and thus far unclassified power. Like the electric fluid, woman presents to the astonished and rather frightened gaze of her comrade, man, a force far surpassing any other yet known, and capable of revolutionizing all existing processes if only it can be equipped with safe machinery and so far comprehended as to be trusted to work after the desired methods.

Thus far man, the lord of creation, has been rather worsted, or, as some people say, “bested,” by both electricity and femininity, but it is to be hoped that, following the precept to “live and learn,” he will finally evolve the true meaning of the puzzle just now presented by both. When that time comes, the world having hitherto bumped along very lamely and painfully over the corduroy road of prejudice and precedent, with half its wheels rendered useless by a chain drag, will begin to travel not only more comfortably, but more expeditiously, and the passengers will find themselves able to think and talk of something outside the discomforts of the passage.

Woman’s position in the world of the future will be a good deal like the position of the yeast in a mass of dough—pervading the otherwise heavy and lifeless material with energy and impulse, developing resources unused and perhaps unsuspected, lifting the whole substance from mere material into the wholesome food of man, the traditional “staff of life.” In the social world she has already done this, and with more and more authority. In the literary world she has marched in her army of occupation and taken up good, solid ground, fully intrenched mid fortified by “works” that no engineer can afford to despise. From this serene stronghold she sends out her advanced guard, her corps of construction, her light skirmishers, and occasionally under some able leader a little body of veterans, who intrench themselves upon some new vantage ground, which they hold calmly and impregnably, in spite of all warning cries and shrieks that they have passed beyond their sphere and must retreat.

In the world of art woman has also defined her position as a living and growing power. Men have always encouraged the idea that a cultivated woman should know something about art—that is, she should be able to tell the work of one artist from another and should be able to intelligently follow his instructions in the matter of forming tastes and opinions. Also it was nice for a lady to be able to make pretty little pencil sketches of a tree and a pond, an impossible cottage in the background. Sometimes she might aspire to water colors and have a dear little portfolio of washy views to exhibit to him of an evening. A few eccentric and strong minded young women were capable perhaps of copying in oil color the pictures originated by men, and might, in fact, be permitted to do so, if they were accompanied to the galleries by some elder female or suitable male guardian, for, of course, being a woman, she would not have sense or self-respect enough to protect herself.

But now that women come forward as artists, not copyists; now that more than one woman has said, “If Rosa Bonheur can, why cannot I?” now that it is more and more clearly proved day by day that a woman’s intuitive perception of character and daring analysis, added to her facile touch and delicate feeling, makes her the best portrait painter in the world if she has the artistic endowment, why, now, poor bewildered man has to drop his dear old time-honored statement that woman never invents, but simply copies; that she is only the moon to his sun and all the rest of it. If she can divine and put into form the soul of a man instead of simply copying his lineaments, what is to hinder her from painting the soul of nature and the true inwardness of events?

But now at last woman presents herself in the world of business, and not as an employee or as a capitalist simply, but in all capacities. She modestly feels and pleasantly says that there is really nothing beyond her capacity in any form of business with which man has hitherto coped. She feels herself competent to discuss bonds and stocks and loans, and even the silver question and tariff.

She sees nothing beyond her in the question of manufactures or of imports. She can gauge the values of teas and sugars and spices in bulk as well as by retail. She is no more alarmed by a bale of cloth or a case of silk or cartons of lace than she is by a single yard of these fabrics. She is quite aware that several women have ventured into the business world upon an extended scale, and have come to grief and some times to obloquy, but she gently inquires if the rash pioneers of a new advance are to be taken as just specimens of the army behind, or if because a short time ago an unlicensed mob hurled themselves upon the new lands just open to the people it is proved that our western country cannot be decently settled?

Women have come into the business world heavily handicapped by the precedents and the prejudices of man, who, having hitherto had everything his own way, naturally desires to keep it so. This he calls being conservative.

Also woman is handicapped by her own inexperience. She is a good deal in the case of one who, having long laid bound and blinded, suddenly receives sight and freedom. She is dazed and dizzy for the moment, but only for the moment, and, trust me, she will never again return to the blindness or the bondage. Her place henceforth is shoulder to shoulder, side by side with man, his comrade, his equal, his true helpmeet in each and every world into which mankind may enter—the other half without which he can never be a whole, and this dear old world of ours can never attain its true perfection of attainment.